News from April 2008
Memories and articles from back in the day
Happy Birthday Web
I’m a little late on this for Australia, but in many parts of the world it is still April 30, so, Happy Fifteenth Birthday Web!
If you were a human you would be in the smack in the middle of the very worst part of your spotty, rebellious, confused teenagerhood.
And no … Read more »
The future of journalism conference
Sadly this event has only just crossed our radars, but if you are in Sydney, and have an interest in news media, the Future of Journalism conference today looks well worth attending.
If you are going, please send your reports of the day!
One step closer to the death of telemarketing
I like this as I do feel it is one step closer to one of the three things that I consider to be the worst three (marketing) scourges on the planet: telemarketing. We all pay (handsomely, thank you Telstra) for the privilege of having a landline. I do not have … Read more »
Guerilla Usability Testing with Andy Budd — Sold Out
I hope everyone who really really wanted to get along to learn about practical usability testing with Clearleft’s Andy Budd next month in Melbourne has managed to get a ticket, because the news is that this workshop, very popular from the start, has now completely sold out.
All of which … Read more »
There is no spoon
Via Flowing Data, a fantastic site which explores data visualisation, is this beautiful map of the United States, developed by just one person, Ben Fry.
Only, there’s a catch.
This map has no topograhical features. It has no geopolitical features. You can see … Read more »
John Allsopp speaking in Japan
For our myriad Japanese readers, I’ll be doing a number of presentations in Tokyo in June, on microformats, CSS3, and the web beyond the desktop.
More details here.
New guide to women tech speakers
At Web Directions we’ve always had a strong commitment to diversity among our speakers, paying particular attention to ensuring at least a reasonable representation of women speakers. Many conference organisers have lamented the difficulty of finding women speakers, something which Jen Beckman helped address some time ago.
Now New Zealander … Read more »
Thanks to our supporter Acid Labs
Stephen Collins will be known to many in the web industry in Australia as a consultant, blogger, and big thinker on all things 2.0
Stephen’s also a great community contributor, having been one of the instigators of the recent BarCamp Canberra. He’s also the founder of acidlabs, one of our … Read more »
Sleeveface — Amusing Flickr Meme
OK, the purpose of this exercise isn’t really to show you this meme, which you’ve probably seen anyway: Sleeveface.
What I’m pondering here, for my own reasons is, why do some memes work and others do not? With about 1300 entries (a lot of them from the same people), I’d … Read more »
Making the most of a conference
There’s no doubt attending a conference is a very big investment of time, money and effort. So, how do you make the most of that investment? Neerav Bhatt has a very detailed post at his blog, looking at the things you can do before, during and after attending an … Read more »
Final resource from WDN08 — Indi Young’s Innovation with Mental Models
Innovation with Mental Models was one of my favourite presentations from Web Directions North this year. Indi, not to mention the clients she did the work for, was incredibly generous with the detailed description of her mental models approach to user research and product design.
Fascinating, candid content presented … Read more »
Melbourne — Next Wave Festival
If full days at Web Directions User Experience isn’t enough for you and you’re hankering for more culture “after hours”, check out the site for the Next Wave Festival, which starts on May 15 and goes through until May 31. Lots and lots of events, exhibitions, installations, performances and … Read more »
Barcamp Canberra wrap
As we all probably know, an important event occurred in Canberra, the nations Capital this weekend just gone. And there was the 20/20 Summit as well.
Of course I’m talking about Barcamp Canberra, held at the Australian National University lat Saturday.
A fantastic turnout, of 60 or more attendees, … Read more »
Thanks to our supporters, Funnelback
A number of supporters and exhibitors are coming on board for our upcoming events, and we are very thankful for their support. We still have a number of really great value expo and sponsorship opportunities, so if your company is interested in building connections with leading Australian web professionals in … Read more »
Upcoming RIA events from Microsoft and Adobe
Rich Internet Applications, a term increasingly used for desktop like web applications, or hybrid web applications, developed with technologies like Flash, Silverlight, AIR and others are gaining increasing attention among web designers and developers.
If you are interested in learning more about these specific technologies and their use, Adobe and Microsoft … Read more »
Web Directions Speakers in the press — Laurel Papworth
One of our very favourite Web Directions speakers, social media/network/software guru Laurel Papworth has hit the big time. No, not a gig at the 2020 Summit, but even better — an interview on morning TV. Through the magic of YouTube, see Laurel on “9am with David and Kim”.… Read more »
Breaking news: UCD is dead
Looks like the Jared Spool has set the cat amongst the pigeons at the IA Summit by making the claim that “UCD was an out-dated methodology that should be retired by the UX community”. Strong words.
Check the full story including Jared’s complete thoughts in this blog post.
All Web Directions North slides and podcasts now online
There was a whole host of genuinely excellent presentations at Web Directions North back in January. The good news for people who weren’t there is that so many of the presenters were incredibly generous with their knowledge and expertise and have allowed us to publish their slides and podcasts.
Check them … Read more »
Who’s this Jason Ryan guy?
You might have noticed we’ve got an optional extra breakfast included in the program at out up coming Canberra event, Web Directions Government. If you work in government, and you have any interest at all in the exciting Government 2.0 things they have been doing … Read more »
Early Bird closes tonight
A quick note for anyone interested in coming to Web Directions Government or User Experience. Save $100 by registering before midnight tonight.
Classic nerdy time waster
Looking to while away a nice 20 minute block on this Thursday afternoon? Prove to yourself just how clever you really are with The Rather Difficult Font Game. And if that’s not enough, and you’d prefer to stray way off topic and not even kid yourself that this is … Read more »
Early Bird for Melbourne and Canberra closes Thursday at midnight
Just a couple of days to go now to take advantage of our early bird pricing of $100 off Web Directions Government and User Experience. So, to get to either of these conferences for just $495 (including GST), fully catered, with wonderful speakers like Andy Budd, Robert … Read more »
Web Standards group Melbourne next week
Next week on the Wednesday the 23rd I have the pleasure and honour of speaking at the Melbourne Web Standards Group, along with Gerry Gaffney.
Gerry will be speaking on How users really search, while I’ll be presenting a variation on the session I did with Dave Shea at Web … Read more »
Can the Cellphone Help End Global Poverty?
and cure cancer…
Despite newspaper sub-editors love hyperbole (hey you are reading this aren’t you) sometimes the sensationally headlined articles are worth reading.
In last year’s closing keynote presentation, the inspiring Mark Pesce mentioned the adoption of mobile phones in the fishing markets of Kerala in southern India, and how … Read more »
Buy a pixel, return someone’s sight
Need to bump up your karma points before the excesses of the weekend? Do something for someone else today and you could remain guilt free for the whole weekend.
The guys over at Adobe’s Sydney office have set up MillionEyesofSite as part of a team building program. Between 4.30pm on … Read more »
Resources from Web Directions North
We’ve just gone live with a whole bunch of resource pages from Web Directions North 2008. For reasons too elaborate to bore you with here I decided to date stamp these back in February, so they might not be showing up in your reader.
Here’s those we have published so far … Read more »
Early Bird pricing extension for Web Directions Government and User Experience
It is hard to push through funding approvals to get to something like Web Directions. There’s been a bit of clamour about there simply not being enough time before early bird pricing ended, so we’ve decided to extend the cutoff date until next Thursday April 17 at midnight.
So now you … Read more »
Web Directions South 2008 survey closes
Thanks so much to the 85 people who took the time to share with us your thoughts on content for Web Directions South 2008. There are lots and lots of interesting new ideas in there — check out the spreadsheet here. In particular it was great to hear about … Read more »
Video on Flickr
My first response is that I like the way Flickr are doing this. In a move which is lightweight, simple, restrained and humble, pro users can now upload video clips up to 90 seconds long.
I like it because I think it’s going to foster something different to most of … Read more »
Powerhouse Museum joins The Commons on Flickr
More genuine awesomeness. Our very own Powerhouse Museum, just today, has become the first museum to join The Commons on Flickr. They will be uploading photos from The Tyrell Collection, a series of glassplate negatives from around the turn of the century, to their Flickr stream. Sections of … Read more »
Image is everything
One serious drawback of moving house in Australia is you’ll typically wait no small time to get your internet connection moved. For the last three weeks, I’ve been in this situation, and as connection is not an option, I’ve needed and alternative until someone could be bothered providing me with … Read more »
Cameron Adams — The Man in Blue
He’s presented to rooms packed with some of the toughest audiences in the business at 66% of Web Directions Conferences, and survived the horrors of building a site with me as the client.
Cameron: Why have you used an anchor element with no content here when you could have added the … Read more »
Web Directions North Podcasts
Late last week we started releasing the podcasts from Web Directions North in January. Shortly I’m going to be gathering them all together into complete resources pages, with the MP3s, slides and any other materials we have, that will be hosted here at the Web Directions site. But if … Read more »
If I were…
If I were a fresh faced young CS undergraduate I would be onto the this opportunity to work for very good guys at Freshview (think Campaign Monitor and Mailbuild) like white on rice.
If I were a woman with my finger on the pulse of the Aussie startup scene I’d … Read more »
Excellent typography presentation from Jeff Croft
The possibility of truly excellent typography on the web, a la that beautiful book The Elements of Typographic Style, has been a reality for the last couple of years. Check out the MP3 of Jeff Croft’s presentation, Typography — Beyond the Font at last year’s Webmaster Jam Session, … Read more »
Sebastian Chan: DJ by night, web pioneer by day
Years ago I used to love listening to 2SER Radio in the afternoons, I think it was between 1pm and 4pm, when every afternoon a couple of different presenters would come in and play some of the finest music radio I have ever heard. Just good, interesting, largely dance … Read more »
Reminder — Early bird pricing for Melbourne and Canberra runs out April 11
We know it can take forever to get those approvals to go through, but don’t forget that to take advantage of the early bird price of just $495 for Web Directions Government or Web Directions User Experience, you need to get that registration in by Friday April 11. … Read more »
Design Coding by the SEO Rapper
Raising the bar for in house presentations on the benefits of web standards, the SEO Rapper really knows his stuff: